USA > Minnesota > Polk County > Compendium of history and biography of Polk County, Minnesota > Part 3
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The record of the early human occupation of the Red River Valley of the North is very incomplete and imperfeet. It seems quite probable that from ereation until a few hundred years ago it was not occupied at all by human beings, and its only denizens were the wild birds of the air, the wild beasts of the prairies and seanty forests, and the fishes of the lakes and streams. There are no signs of a remote settlement or other form of aneient civilization in the Valley.
That very ancient and very mysterious raee, which, for inability to coin a more suitable name, we call the Mound Builders, and which lived at one period in the southeastern part of the State, never dwelt, for any considerable time in the Red River Valley. At any rate, none of their mounds and tumuli, which invari- ably denote and prove their former presenee, are found here. There are mounds but they were not built by the old Mound Builders. The so-called Red Indians were the first human oceupants, but their oe- eupation was fugitive, unstable, and disconnected.
It is true that there are mounds or tumuli within the present boundaries of Polk County, and that some authorities have pronouneed these to be the work of the old Mound Builders; of course these authorities are of those that believe the Mound Builders were the
immediate aneestors of the Red Indians. The prinei- pal mound in the county is now within the limits of Crookston, and only three-fourths of a mile from the eenter of the city. It is on the south bank of the Red Lake River and 35 feet above the stream.
In about 1890 Prof. Moore, then principal of the Crookston City Sehools, and some of his pupils made exeavations in this mound and found in it human bones, including skulls. From the reports made to the compiler of this examination it does not seem that any pottery, flint, stone, or copper implements, or any other reliable evidences of Mound Builder work or oe- cupation were found. These evidences certainly would have been unearthed had the old pre-historie raee been the builders. Their work and former sites of occupation are almost as readily determined as those of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
In noting the Crookston mound Hon. William Watts plausibly suggests that it marks the site of the cemetery of an old-time Sioux village. This may be a correct theory, although we now know a great deal of the early and very early history of the Sioux, and we do not know that (at least within the proper time when skulls and other human bones would be pre- served fer a long time in the earth) there was ever a
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considerable Indian village at the site of Crookston. If the Sioux had such a village, it must have been of the Sisseton band (Sissetonwans, or People of the Marsh), because the Sissetons were later located not very far to the west or south; we know their early history fairly well, and we have no account of such a village in that part of the country. Possibly the mound may have been the burial place for a village of Cheyenne Indians, for we well know that they were in this quarter for several years before they were driven out by the Sioux and went into various parts of South Dakota and the southeastern part of North Dakota, and mainly upon the river which still bears their name as it is commonly pronounced.
Both the Cheyennes and the Sioux built mounds over their dead: both tribes made and used pottery. But their mounds were simple sepulchres and their pottery was solely for domestie purposes. In 1680 Father Hennepin found the Sioux of Mille Lacs boiling their food in fire-proof earthen pots, which they had made. But neither tribe built large, high mounds, for temples of worship, for observation or watehtowers, and for the burial places of their chiefs or kings, as the Mound Builders always did. Neither tribe made flint and stone implements, either arrow and lance heads or axes, spades, ete., and the Mound Builders constantly made these things. The Sioux, Cheyennes, and other Red Indians pieked up the flint arrow points and lance-heads and used them (though many of them had come from quarries as far off as West Virginia), but they could not make them-and none of them ever know who did!
It is probable that the Crookston mound was made to cover the remains of their warriors slain in some pre-historie battle, in which the Sioux were the vietors and had the opportunity of decently interring their dead. The Sioux often, and indeed almost commonly. raised a slight mound of earth over the skeletons of their dead. If not slain in battle, their dead were sus- pended in trees or placed upon high scaffolds until the flesh was gone, and then the bones were taken down and buried. Sometimes the remains were buried in
receptacles made in the banks of streams and eoulees, and even in the big mounds made by their predeees- sors in the country. the Mound Builders. The idea probably was to honor the venerated remains and to preserve them from destruction or deseeration. Many a modern Indian's bones have been found in a Mound Builder's sacrificial mound, and thus fairly justifying the belief that the mound itself was the work of modern Indians.
There is a possibility that the great battle between the Sioux and the Chippewas described by Warren as having occurred on Sand Hill River, and mentioned on another page, was really fought on the Red Lake River and that the Crookston mound is the grave of the Sioux warriors killed therein-as suggested on an- other page. But there is no positive evidenee in sup- port of this suggestion, and Warren is elear in his statement that the battle was on the Sand Hill River. There is no mound on the Sand Hill near the supposed site of the battle, although the Sioux held the field and had the opportunity to bury their dead properly ae- eording to their eustom, with a heap of dirt raised over them.
Prof. Winehell's "Aborigines of Minnesota" men- tions (p. 361) the Crookston mound and gives its dimensions, when he surveyed it, in 1880, as "7 feet high and 120 feet in diameter." The location is, how- ever, erroneously given as "about two miles southwest from Crokston."
The "Aborigines" notes (p. 362) another mound in what is now Polk County, and which is described as having a diameter of 58 feet and a height of four and a half feet. Its location is given as in township 148. range 45, not far from Melvin Station.
The Sand Hill River mounds are also noted on page 362 of " Aborigines." These are three small mounds, averaging about four feet high and 55 feet aeross. which are located in township 147, range 45, west of Fertile. It is difficult to tell without examination by digging into them whether these are natural or artifi- cial. There are numerous erroneous statements in "Aborigines"-typographical errors often-regard-
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COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
ing these mounds. One, now in Red Lake County is deseribed (p. 362) as in "seetion 90," when section 9 is meant.
The absence of dense forests filled with deer and other game, and furnishing fuel and material for habi- tations, was one reason why the Red Indians avoided the Valley region. There was little other kind of country here save the big prairies, which were almost untraversable save by horseback, and these aborigines had no horses, and indeed never saw one; sinee horses were not original to Minnesota, nor, indeed, indige- nous to the United States, but had to be introduced from Europe. The aborigines of the Red River Val- ley, with their flint arrow heads and lance heads, and traveling altogether on foot, had a difficult job to kill buffalo and deer. Their best and common mode of securing these animals was to creep upon them as they grazed in the high grass of a lowland, near a lake or river, and, suddenly bonnding forth, stampede the herd and chase its members into the water, where they often came up with them and speared them to death. Farther westward the tribes were acenstomed to ehase the buffalos over high precipices.
TIIE CREES WERE THE FIRST RED INDIANS.
The identified Indians who first visited, and prob- ably lived at intervals, in the section of the Red River Valley now embraced within Polk County were the Crees. There were others before them, of course, bnt we do not know who they were or what to call them. The Crees were in this region, especially about Pembina, Lake Winnipeg, and the lower Valley, when the first white men came. The Jesuit Fathers men- tion them, in their "Relations" for the year 1640, as "dwelling on the rivers of the northern sea, [mean- ing Hudson's Bay] where the Nipissings go to trade with them." Lacombe, in his "Dietionary of the Cree Language," says that, according to their tradi- tions, the Crees-in, say about 1750-"inhabited for a time the region about the Red River, intermingled with the Chippewas and Maskegons," but were at- tracted to the plains by the buffalo. The Maskegons
were praetically themselves Crees, being an offshoot of the tribe. They were often ealled the Swamp Crees, becanse Maskeg (or Mnskeg) means a swamp.
Many anthorities regard the Crees as Chippewas. Their language is virtually a Chippewa dialeet ; their manners and customs are mueh alike; they too were a forest people, and finally they had a tradition that they were descendants of a band that in the long ago seeeded from the Chippewas in northern Minnesota and went to dwell on Lake Cree. The Smithsonian Institution "Handbook" (1907) says: "The Crees are closely related, linguistically and otherwise, to the Chippewa. Prof. Hayden regarded them as an off- shoot of the latter and believed the Maskecons another division of the same group." Many bands of the Crees were nomads and were generally unsettled, their movements being governed largely by their food supply. In their wanderings they mingled with the Assiniboines, who were offshoots of the Sioux, and in- termarried with them and the old Chippewas from whom they had sprung.
Father Belcourt, the good priest of Pembina, who lived so long with them on the Assiniboine, Saskatche- wan, and Red Rivers, says the Crees, in 1850, ealled themselves Ke-nish-ti-nak, meaning held by the winds. They lived long at Lake Winnipeg, whereon, when the winds blew hard, making the waves run high, they were cheeked by the winds and could not travel in their little frail eanoes. Radisson, who, in 1659, either saw them or heard of them, says the Cree eanoes were so small that they could not carry more than two persons. The name of the tribe was written by the French as Kri-stin-anx; then it beeame Christenanx, Kilistinos, Kenistonas, etc., but the chief French form was Chris-ti-nanx, which was pronounced Crees- te-nose; and the French finally contraeted the word to Crees, as they contracted Nandowessioux to Sionx.
Now, when the white traders of the Hudson's Bay Company eame to the Lake Winnipeg region they found the Crees. The poor savages were overjoyed to meet men who eould furnish them steel implements in exchange for (to them) such simple and easily-pro-
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COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
cured things as beaver and other skins, buffalo robes, and various other kinds of furs and pelts. Many of them came up the Red River in their little boats, made villages in the groves along the river and its tribu- taries, and remained in the country a long time en- gaged in trapping and hunting. The products of their efforts were sent down the river to the Hudson's Bay fort on Lake Winnipeg, which post was for a long time ealled Fort Garry. The Hudson's Bay Fur Com- pany was chartered by King Charles II of England, "the Merry Monarch," May 2, 1670; but it was not until in 1799 that its agents took possession of the Red River proper and established trading posts in the region.
Prior to the advent of the Hudson's Bay Company into their region, the Crees were practically savages of a very wild and unenlightened sort. Their slight contact with the French did not improve them. In the Jesuit "Relations" of 1670-71 Father Dablon writes : "Finally the Kelistinos [a name for the Crees] are dispersed through the whole region to the north of this Lake Superior-possessing neither corn, nor fields, nor any fixed abode, but forever wandering through those vast forests and seeking a livelihood there by hunting." Their condition remained prae- tically unehanged until after the traders came. Then their women married many of the traders and their employes; the families thus ereated lived after eivil- ized fashion, and in time the missionaries and school teachers eame.
The Crees were attacked by smallpox from time to time, and the tribe was greatly reduced by the rav- ages of this disease. They left Minnesota, as a whole, before 1820 and went up into Manitoba and other Canadian provinees. About 10,000 of them are now in Manitoba and about 5,000 elsewhere in northwest- ern Canada. They have always been a peaceful tribe, were never at war with their Algonquian neighbors, and left northern Minnesota rather than fight the Chippewas. In 1885, however, the mixed bloods of the tribes rose in rebellion against the Canadian au- thorities, because it was sought to remove them from
their lands on the Saskatchewan to a more inhospitable region to the northward; but in a little time their rebellion was subdued and their leader, Louis Riel, was executed by hanging, November 16, 1885.
It is reasonably certain that, during the period they were in Minnesota, the Crees visited the country now ealled Polk County, and dwelt there from time to time. To be sure no particulars of their connection with the early history of the county can now be given. We can only assert that, as they were generally through northern Minnesota, and especially along the Red River, they must have been at intervals in Polk County.
The Cheyenne Indians have a tradition that at one time they were settled upon Otter Tail Lake and Lake Traverse and were driven out by the Crees into the upper Minnesota River country, below Big Stone Lake. From the Minnesota Valley, fearing trouble with the Sioux, they removed into what is now South Dakota and North Dakota, many locating on the river bearing their name.
THE CHIPPEWAS FOLLOWED THE CREES.
Although the Chippewas and the Crees were kin- dred people, and of the same blood and lineage, they had separate tribal organizations and are always spoken of and referred to as two different nations or tribes. The word Chippewas is a corruption of Ojib- ways, by which name these Indians formerly called themselves, and which means "roast till puekered np," referring to their manner of cooking meat or of torturing their prisoners. They onee lived about the Sault Ste. Marie. The early French often called them "Saultenrs," which is the equivalent, in old French, of Sauteurs in "Francaise moderne," mean- ing leapers or jumpers. Sault, which is pronounced so or soo, is an old French word meaning leap, and is not found in modern French vocabularies. Sault Ste. Marie, therefore, is literally in English, the Leap of Saint Mary. The Sioux ealled the Chippewas "Hkah- hkah Tonwan," or Waterfalls People, meaning the
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COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
people of the Waterfalls of St. Mary. Hka-hkalı meaning waterfalls and Tonwan meaning people.
The Chippewas occupied the Red River country as the result of a war of conquest. About the beginning of the XVIII Century-probably between 1710 and 1736-they drove the Foxes from northern Wiscon- sin down to Iowa and Illinois and compelled them to confederate with the Sauks (or Sacs). Then, some time after 1736, they turned on the Sioux and drove them (first from Lake Superior and then from North- ern Minnesota generally) soutliward and westward down to the Minnesota and across the Mississippi and the Missouri. The Smithsonian Institution's "Hand- book of American Indians" (Vol. 1, p. 278) indicates that after driving away their enemies from northern Minnesota, tlie Chippewas continued their westward march into North Dakota until they occupied the head waters of the Red River and had a large band as far west as the Turtle Mountains, in the extreme northern section of North Dakota.
It is alleged by the "Handbook" referred to (ibid) that one cause of the dispossession of the Sioux by the Chippewas was to obtain possession of the wild rice tracts about the numerous lakes and streams of northern Minnesota. For a long period the Sioux con- trolled the wild rice output of Minnesota and would not allow the Chippewas to gather it without a sort of tribute payment, and to this tribute the Chippewas vigorously objected. Warren (History of the Ojib- ways) and other authorities cite that the French trad- ers of the posts on Lake Superior furnished the Chip- pewas with fire-arms and then instigated them to attack and drive away the Sioux, because they sold their fnrs to the English traders of the Hudson's Bay Company, instead of to the French of the Lakes. It is probable tliat the real reason of the Chippewa at- tack was a double one-the instigation of the French and the desire to possess the wild rice beds.
The Chippewas were largely dependent upon the wild rice for food. They called it mahnomen, and revered as a goddess the spirit that controlled it. When the Sioux occupied the Mille Lacs country, in
Minnesota, the Chippewas had to travel many miles from their Lake Superior homes, and often to risk their lives, for the wild grain, which was virtually a staff of life for them. They still use large quantities of it. According to the report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for 1900 there were 10,000 Chip- pewas in the United States using wild rice for food. The Sioux, too, use it when they can get it. The de- cisive battle between the Sioux and the Chippewas for the ownership of the wild rice beds of Minnesota is believed by many to have occurred on the eastern shores of Mille Lac, at the supposed Sioux town of Kathio, in about 1750. (See Brower's "Kathio," p. 92.) According to the estimate of Warren, himself a half-blood Chippewa, the battle occurred in 1657 (Minn. Hist. Socy. Collections, Vol. V, p. 157, et seq.), a difference in dates of the two eminent authori- ties of 100 years. Warren further says, however (p. 162), that, after being defeated at Kathio, the Sioux went down near the mouth of Rum River and did not finally leave the Mille Lacs region until 1770.
SIOUX DRIVEN FROM THIEF RIVER.
Practically ever after their advent into the country, the Chippewas continued to hold northwestern Min- nesota, including Polk County, against the Sioux. Warren's History of the Chippewas (p. 356) relates that, for a number of years after the Chippewa occu- pation, a camp of ten tepees of Sioux had their camp on the upper Thief River and succeeded in evading and escaping the guns and tomahawks of their heredi- tary enemies. The surrounding hunting grounds were so rich, and wild rice was so plentiful, that life was easily lived, and they were loth to leave the local- ity. They built a high embankment of earth around their camp and took every means in their power to conceal themselves from their merciless foes. In hunting they would not discharge their guns, because of the loud noise, but used their bows and arrows in killing game.
At last they were discovered by their relentless ene- mies. The Crees and Assiniboines of the Pembina and
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Devil's Lake regions made a treaty with the Yankton and Sisseton Sioux, and a short term of peace resulted. During the deliberations at this treaty, the Crees learned of the existence of the isolated Sioux band and the locality of its camp. When the peace period closed, some Crees gave the information to their Chip- pewa relatives, and the latter, from about Red Lake, soon raised a war party and marched npon the hid- den Sioux. A total surprise was made, and after a brave but unavailing defense, the ten lodges, and all their immnates, were totally destroyed. The embank- ment or breastwork of earth which onee surrounded the little Sioux village was plain to be seen in 1852. Warren received his information of this affair from Wa-non-je-quon, then chief of Red Lake, whose father helped destroy the Sioux.
From the hiding place and seeret oceupation of the Sioux on the little river, the Chippewas afterward called it Ke-moja-ke Se-be, or Secret Place River; but the French traders and coureurs pronounced Kemoj a-ke as Ke mod a-ke, which means stealing. Then the stream began to be called Stealing River and Thief River, and by the latter name it is laid down on Nicollet's map of 1842, and is still so called.
THE INDIANS BATTLING FOR THE COUNTRY.
About 1808 (as near as ean be eonjeetured) a band of Sioux defeated a larger band of Chippewas down on Long Prairie River, in Todd County. The Sioux were Sissetons and Wahpetons, from western Minne- sota and eastern South Dakota, and had come over to hunt on their former rich game preserve. The Chip- pewas were on the way to attack the Sioux on Riee River. The fight lasted all day and was very fieree and bloody. At the elose only seven unhurt Sioux were left, but they were enough to drive back the Chippewas, because they had guns, furnished them by the Hudson's Bay Company's traders on the Red River. The Chippewas also had some guns, but each party used bows and arrows in addition to their fire- arms. The Chippewas captured 36 horses (or ponies), but could not learn to manage them, and, after many
of them had been crippled by kicks and falls, they finally slaughtered every pony and devoured tbem. Old Hole-in-the-Day, then a young man, and his elder brother, Strong Ground, were among the leaders of the Chippewas in this battle.
SIOUX DEFEATED AT PEMBINA.
The same day on which the battle at Long Prairie was fought a large Sioux war party of Sissetons, Wah- petons, and Yanktons attacked the Chippewa villages near Pembina, whose chief was Little Clam. They were defeated with considerable loss and ehased back up the Red River. (Warren, p. 354.) As a result of their defeat on this and other occasions in the same period, the Sionx were forced to retreat to the west- ward of the Red and Mississippi Rivers and south of the Shayenne. Then, for an indefinitely long period, in order to control the beaver dams and the buffalo preserves of the Red River, there was war between the Chippewas and the Sionx, from the Selkirk Set- tlement to Big Stone Lake and the headwaters of the Minnesota. The Assiniboines and Crees were allies of the Sioux in this war. It was during the early years when they made the short peace with the Sioux re- ferred to, and npon its termination when they be- trayed to the Chippewas the existence and site of the little Sioux band on Thief River.
TREACHERY AND TREATIES.
The year after the battle on the Long Prairie River, or about 1819, the Sioux along the whole line of the eastern frontiers became tired of fighting the Chippe- was in open field and sought to defeat them by seeret action involving the foulest treachery, even from the Indian point of view, which considers everything fair in war. They made an extraordinary and apparently sineere attempt to enter into a general and permanent peace with the Chippewas. Chah-pah (or the Beaver), head chief of the Yankton, or Yanktonnais Sioux, who were then about Lake Traverse, had a Chippewa woman for one of his wives. He put her on a good horse, gave her his peace pipe, and bade
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COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF POLK COUNTY
her go to her former people at Pembina and tell them that, in a week or more, he would come to them with a large delegation of Sioux and smoke with them the pipe of profound peace and good will. At the ap- pointed time the Sioux chief, with a large number of his people, arrived at Pembina, and the Red River Chippewas heartily accepted his offers of peace and friendship.
At the same time the Sisseton, Wahpeton, some Yanktons, and a large number of Medawakanton Sioux, met the Mississippi, the Sandy Lake, and the Mille Laes Chippewas in a treaty on the Platte River, near its junetion with the Mississippi, and ten miles south of the present town of Little Falls. The peace pipe was smoked by these former foes, and games of various kinds were played by the young men of the two tribes. For some time all went merrily, friendly, and well.
But a certain Medawakanton Sioux was one of the seven survivors that fought off the Chippewas in the Long Prairie battle. He had not forgotten nor for- given. He picked a quarrel with a Chippewa warrior and struek him with a ball stick. The blow was re- turned and a general fight would have resulted had not yonng Wah-nah-tah (the Charger), a son of Chief Chah-pah, rushed in, foreibly separated the combat- ants, and chastised the offending Sioux. He feared that the Chippewas would become suspicious that the apparent friendly intentions of the Sioux were not real, and they certainly were not. The intent was to cause the Chippewas to be off their guard, and then the Sioux would fall upon them and either extermi- nate them or drive them from the country. The end would justify the means.
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